Akamai Technologies has released its 4th Quarter, 2010 State of the Internet report available for download at www.akamai.com/stateoftheinternet. Based on data gathered from the Akamai Internet Platform, the report provides insight into key global Internet statistics such as the world's fastest and slowest regions for connection speed, the most frequent origins of attack traffic, and the highest-performing geographies for mobile connectivity, as well as resulting trends over time.

In the fourth quarter of 2010, over 556 million unique IP addresses from 234 countries/regions connected to the Akamai Internet Platform. This represents 4.2% more IP addresses than connected in the third quarter of 2010, and over 20% more than in the same quarter a year ago.

The top ten countries/regions accounted for nearly 70% of the total observed IP addresses, indicating that the majority of the world's unique IP addresses are concentrated within a proportionally small number of geographies. The findings are in line with an October report from the International Telecommunications Union, which identified that "while 71% of the population in developed countries are online, only 21% of the population in developing countries are online."(1)

The report shows New Zealand broadband just ahead of Australian services.

Mobile consumption and connectivity speeds continued to increase in the fourth quarter. Of the 105 mobile providers surveyed by Akamai, 62 experienced an increase in average data consumption delivered by Akamai over the prior quarter and 89 providers saw consumption increase year-over-year. Looking at average peak connection speeds amongst the 105 providers, yearly growth was generally strong, with average peak connection speeds more than doubling at over 30 providers, and with 96 total providers showing year-over-year growth.

While the list of countries/regions comprising the top five sources for attacks remained constant from the prior quarter, there was a clear shift in the rankings. Most notably, the United States dropped from second to fifth place, accounting for 7.3% of global observed attack traffic. Russia moved into first place, accounting for 10% of global observed attack traffic. In looking at attack traffic from just mobile network providers, Italy remained in the top spot, responsible for 30% of the observed attack traffic in the fourth quarter.

Akamai's quarterly State of the Internet report is based on data collected from the Akamai Internet Platform, which delivers up to 30 percent of global Web traffic on a given day, and is made up of over 84,000 servers in 72 countries deployed within approximately 1,000 of the individual networks that make up the public Internet. To learn more, and to access the archive of past reports, please visit